Institution

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Highest Degree

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Faye Crosby is a social psychologist specializing in social justice. She is interested in the relation between objective (i.e., consensual) and subjective reality; she has looked at individual attitudes in the context of social change and stability.

While testing the theory of relative deprivation, Crosby discovered a phenomenon entitled "the denial of personal disadvantage." Crosby found that people typically imagine themselves to be exempt from the injustices that they can recognize as affecting their membership or reference groups. One line of her research documents the cognitive and motivational bases of the denial of personal disadvantage.

Given how widespread is the denial of personal disadvantage, organizations need to avert unrest through monitoring and other proactive systems like affirmative action. Yet affirmative action is very controversial. Crosby's current work investigates the bases of people's reactions to affirmative action. She is now using her affirmative action work to launch a new series of studies on how people can undertake non-revolutionary changes in rules that come to be revealed as unfair. She is also examining other ways, such as mentoring, of enhancing the peaceful evolution of work organizations.